you are not getting vitamin D from the sun if you do these two things.

If you are in the health and wellness community for a while you have heard how important vitamin D is to your overall well-being.

Having health level of vitamin D is associated with

– less inflammation

– stronger immunity’

-stronger teeth and bones

-better mood and less depression

-less cancer rate

We are not going to go in much details regarding the benefit of vitamin D because you can find this easily these days but there are a couple of things that are important and not been talked about much still.

Before I go on, we need to educate ourselves about the solar spectrum. In the ultraviolet radiation, there are two kinds, UVA and UVB

UVB is what we want to produce vitamin D in your skin. Other parts, UVA have very different effects. UVB can cause cancerous mutations and can also break down the vitamin D formed on your skin.

If you think that you are getting some sun through a glass window then it is a huge mistake. Usually glass cuts UVB (beneficial one) but UVA will still filter through. That means you are only getting damaging ray and not the one that can produce vitamin D, which is a potent defence against melanoma.

it is important to note that vitamin D3 is an oil soluble steroid hormone formed by your body. We need UVB so that when it hits your skin it converts a cholesterol derivative in your skin into vitamin D3.

Unfortunately it does not happen immediately. Apparently it takes about 48 hours for the whole thing to complete. So if you have a shower with soup you are washing the vitamin D off your skin before it can reach to your blood streams!

so two things to note

– UVB is the ray you need to get vitamin D happening in your body. get the sunshine directly , NOT through a glass

– do not have a shower using soap for 48 hours after the exposure

I know I know… you are thinking “I cannot NOT have a shower for 48 hours!” You can but not use soap on the larger areas of your skin. You can still use soap under your arms etc. ( though conventional soap is not recommended for any areas of your skin , any time anyway….)

Yoko is the founder of organic raw food and living food cafe, Shoku Iku. The desire to feed her new born daughter and herself healing natural food lead Yoko to discover the importance of the relationship between good health, diet, mind and lifestyle choices. Yoko studied the Macrobiotic lifestyle at the Kushi Institute in Japan, this inspired her to train as a holistic nutritionist which then opened up the world of raw and living foods.